Use Flour Instead Of Smoke For Your Photography

Benjamin Von Wong finished an informative BTSV of his last dancer photoshoot. This video was filmed by Eva Jinn Productions. Ben gives some great reasons to use flour instead of smoke to accent light in your photos. Check out the high res shots and more info here.

Does anyone know that flour, actually, can be dangerous? A friend of mine, a doctor, says that inhalation of this powder (being very thin) can affect the respiratory system. What do you think about it?

I love the results -- far better than anything I've ever seen with smoke. I do have one "however."

I am in agreement with the cautions about breathing the flour dust.

Once it's introduced into the air, it creates a very fine particulate that can easily be breathed into the lungs. That has to be unhealthy, especially for dancers. And even though it is being kept a short distance from the dancers, the finest of the particulate matter is still wafting through the air when they can breath it. Ditto the photographer and his assistants. Anyone on the room, for that matter, including the clean up crew.

And while it's true that people who make pizzas and other baked goods work with flour, they are not purposefully tossing handfuls of it in the air for hours on end to the point where it is visibly restricting the light, as would happen to get these great effects in these photos. Even so, people who work around flour dust on a regular basis wear dust masks.

And another thing -- flour dust suspended in air is not just highly flammable, it's highly explosive, which is why smoking is never allowed around grain elevators.

Sorry to throw such a damp rag on what you're doing, but you're playing with people's well being.

I can just say WOW! Benjamin that is an awesome piece of work. Even the behin the scenes video is phantastic. I like it and I hope this will be some kind of inspiration for my future photographical work. Thank you so much!